How to judge the Lib Dems

Writing in The Times today Stephen Pollard asks what kind of government would the holier than thou Liberal Democrats make?

Good question. If this week's performance is anything to go by, the party led by wee Charles ("mine's a double") Kennedy, the answer is Pollard concludes probably exactly the same as they are out of government and in third place: a glaringly opportunist bunch of hypocrites, which of course whinging from the sidelines they do so well in classic oppositionist mode - opposing everything/proposing the preposterous knowing full well that they will never have to implement a word of it.

Pollard is writing about the party's resounding silence over the brown envelope cash (£2.4m of it) that the party has accepted from Michael Brown. The money represents two third's of the party's income.

Brown was of course this week unveiled as a fraudster who has been arrested three times and accused of bouncing a dozen cheques and is regarded as an absconder in Florida, having skipped probation.

Lib Dems response to this? Nothing. Read the piece in full here.

Riots? What riots?

I don't know, Too Early To Tell is just so bleeding plural, innit. One moment we've got Neil Clark, the next Nick Cohen and now gorgeous, pouting Melanie Phillips and her take on the Birmingham race riots... or little local difficulty, as it has been largely portrayed in the press.

Iran should be "wiped off the face of the earth"

Israel's new president created a sense of outrage in the east yesterday by describing Iran as a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the face of the earth". Ariel Sharon, who is more hardline than his predecessor, told students in Tel Aviv that a new wave of terrorist attacks would be enough to finish off Iran.

He said: "Anybody who recognises Iran will burn in the fire of the Israeli nation's fury, [while] any [western leader] who recognises the Islamicist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the free world." He was addressing a conference titled The World Without Islamicism.

Surely some mistake? - Ed

A Cameron in the hand, is worth two in the...

So that nice David Cameron's far from a moderate, "compassionate conservative". Instead he's a war-mongering neo-con with a nice smile, gilded youth and, whisper it, a hell-raising past... now where have we heard that before?








Sadly couldn't find the one with him and the prossie

No one expects....

I spotted this in Metro, but couldn't find trace of it on This Is London so had to go to the local paper, which is rather less forthcoming on the detail of the prosecution, more on the poor lad who was nicked by the would-be religious police.

However, according to the original Metro story...

A teenager has been handed an 80-hour community service order for wearing an offensive t-shirt.

Adam Shepherd... was convicted under new anti-hate laws which ban people from displaying religiously insulting signs...

Which seems a bit strange given that the laws aren't in force yet? On the other hand, given the natural zealotry of the police/ magistrates, this kind of thing shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise...

Little Britain? Here's Saudi!

Liberalism for the liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals

Nick Cohen nails it, though of course he is as much at fault as those dreadful post-modern relativists - his brand of muscular liberalism existing in an ahistorical vacuum, as it were.

It seems to me that while the people who can see more than one side of an argument generally decline to have it and seek only to get on with their lives, those who get to the top, who run countries or get their opinions splashed across comment pages, are invariably the single minded - people who, because they are only really capable of holding one opinion, taking one side, having one dream, can run with it so much faster than the rest of us, burdened as we are with inconvenient truths, uncomfortable facts, a surfeit of ideological purity or spiritual certainty.

Little wonder then, this results in so much woe.

Waking up... and rolling over

Another plot thwarted as death threats are renewed against Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Meanwhile, as the Dutch appear to be considering following the Flemish burkha ban (well, I certainly ain't seen many in Ostend) it gradually appears to be dawning on our government that their grand plans for faith schools could possibly cause one or two tiny problems.

Not that this is the inspiration behind Magaret Hodge's speech, mind.

In a strongly worded speech to the Labour thinktank Progress, which Tony Blair will also attend, she will warn that overt racism is on the rise among Britain's white working class. As a result, she argues, tough measures must be taken to prevent race relations deteriorating.

"Uncomfortable as it might seem, we do need to respond to the frustrations felt by the white working class communities in which new immigrant communities tend to settle."

Never mind that many of the communities the new immigrants tend to settle in are actually mixed or afro-caribbean or whatever, champagne-quaffing New Labour-types prefer to cling to their myths about the recidivist racism of the white working class (and the contempt new Labour has always had for the poor, period) rather than accept that their immigration policies have alienated established communities of whatever colour, creed or religion.

Taking the True Blue Mickeys in a Blizzard of Golden Brown Hypocrisy - Will Cameron Have the Last Laugh, or are the Tories playing Dealer's Choice?

For what seems like ages everybody has been asking David Cameron if he has ever inhaled. Basically this was a case of press reflexes and bad research. Some lovely young woman in the Guuadian was even defending his right to smoke and not tell us earlier this week and very amusingly too, there was a nice quip about Blunkett at Annabels in fact - which made me wonder if she also had a ghost-writing job on that odd pastiche Norman Johnson column of theirs.

Things inevitably got nastier of course, because this wasn't just about the press going after public figures in a post-Kate Moss universe. Had that been the case, after all, things would have certainly got colder faster, if you get my icy allusion.

No, what was happening was that Cameron had given a surprisingly well-recieved speech to the Tory faithful. Expected to fall flat on his face at conference like an over-inflated Wiliam Hague in a Portillo wig, Cameron had instead left the podium to rapturous applause and by all accounts spent the following evening being metaphorically cluster-fucked by the snowy-haired Sussex massive. In short the boy done good. And the bookies shortened their odds.

David Davis on the other hand, the street-fighter from the backstreets who had expected to enter by the big front steps, suddenly found himself pointed toward the tradesmen's entrance by the high tory glitterati. He was roundly condemned for being too serious, too well-rehearsed and talking over the greying heads of conference to the electorate. Who the HELL did he think he was - anyone would think the electorate decided who was going to be the next Tory Prime Minister. Sussex did not concur. The Davis campaign was in crisis. Liam the Fox even looked like he might slip it through the middle, (every little helps, right Liam?) and Davis' lethargy, bombast and ignorance of the ways of the Tory gerontocracy (not to mention of gerontophilia) was rapidly making him look like a fourth-placed also ran.

This was of course also widely regraded as a fillip for Clarke -the race coalesced around two front-runners. Davis was down and out, Rifkind was readying himself to stand aside.

So no surprise that the candidate who needed a good dusting of drug innuendos was Mr Cameron and by this week everyone had stopped blowing smoke and started talked the crystal clear language of class A's.

Where does Cameron go, he's just said no (comment). He knows there's no danger of Pete Docherty's manager ever appearing at his parties - and that even if he did there would of course be nothing to see (hey, get me, I care about legal action!). But still the inuendo continues, what to do eh?

Leaving aside the facts, because we really don't know them, Cameron has a problem - admitting some minor pecadillo in the past would be an option - in terms of ending the 'why not answer the question' phase - but lets face it the guy lives in Michael Portillo's old constituency and he knows exactly what happened to Mikey P when he decided to answer the gay 'lily' rumours by saying 'I tried it once but I didn 't really like it and I'm better now'. There was no way Davey C was going to end up in media purgatory with Andrew Neil pulling his strings as he danced the sofa shuffle with whomever the appropriate analogy for Diane Abbott would be in his case (Cat Stevens maybe?).

Luckily for Mr Cameron fate has handed him a sword, or at any rate a syringe and a bottle of methadone. So now just try and besmirch his reputation you scumbags, for the man is a saint, or at least an angel, as he valiantly helps his relative overcome addiction; presumably by the sheer force of his moral rectitude and the ability to buy flights to South Africa - the rehabilitation place of choice for the modern British upper classes.

It has to be said this is a good development for Campaign Cameron - especialy after that slight wobble yesterday when he started going on about people's right to make mistakes and learn from it - I mean, crikey, most Associated Newspapers' journalists could smell the blood THERE a mile off, even through blocked noses!

So will Cameron now ride to victory in his Golden Brown ambulance? Or will the high tories find this all a bit hard to bear, a bit too close to home? Think Diana, guys and buy his stock? Maybe - of course they can always play safe and stick with the guy who quite openly admits to being in the pay of international drug dealers responsible for millions of deaths .

Thatcher the Terrorist, Brown the Bliar?

I went to catch the tube this morning and it was shut down - no, obviously not permanently - but the gates were shut on the rear entrance I usually use. Through them I could see a silent empty station. I went round to the front of the station, not so much to find out more information as to catch the bus, which left from that side and could take me to an alternative station - a train station in fact, for the north london overland line from Gospel Oak to Kensal Rise - which is my usual preferred journey to work.

This morning however I had rejected the overland train after it let me down yesterday through an unholy concoction of lateness and screwed up connections with bus services which were circumscribed by water main work. The result was lateness on my part, for a meeting for which I wished to be on time (not least because the last time I had endeavoured to attend it the previous week a similar concoction of transport woes had intervened; though on that occasion water mains weren't involved, just full buses driving past without stopping, ...for half an hour).

My first reaction on seeing the closed tube gate was irritation and as I walked past the front of the station and saw a little crowd of tube workers outside the also closed main entrance, I briefly thought of terrorism and chuckled grimly to myself that this was now one of my first reactions. A few years back I might have assumed the little orange jacketed gaggle with a sign were a picket line and that industrial action had closed the station... - yes, hold on, I am going somewhere with this...

Today is Margaret Thatcher's birthday , on the Today programme John 'I'm not a Tory at work' Humphreys was lining up tories to analyse her legacy; I had to content myself with not travelling to work on it.

While Tories who had exited stage left (was that Shaun 'seen which way the wind is blowing' Woodward) lamented the fact that Thatch's rhetoric had left the unwarranted impression that they gave not a sh*t about those who are always with us (the poor), I pondered that the real legacy was a bizarre constitutional settlement between government and business in which serious investment in public services was only ever viewed as truly legitimate if a fair proportion of it ended up in the back pockets of shareholders who had made no contribution whatsoever to producing the capital being invested and furthermore were shouldering very little risk - yeah, I know, tell that to Balfour Beatty over Hatfield or indeed Jarvis - I'm afraid I feel as much sympathy for them as I do for Railtrack shareholders.

Maybe the shareholders of these businesses would also have had something to say about Mrs Thatcher's legacy.

The Today programme's other 'big event' was an interview with Gordon Brown and one of the Tory hagiographers (Parkinson) chose to relate the two. He wasn't far off beam either, the comparison he drew was over the Labour Chancellor's style and comments on fiscal prudence and growth - and how this reflected the true legacy of Thatcherism - a Labour government that understood economics and that was fiscally prudent with respect to public investment (though oddly of course the Thatcher and Major governments invested heavily in some areas - like the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf - just rather selectively, so that some parts of the country socially and geographically had longer recessions and rather different business cycles to others). Oh yes and furthermore he mentioned that Labour was currently reintroducing market mechanisms to the health service a la Thatch.

Gordon Brown was however talking about Europe, to be exact he was lecturing Europe on how the European economic model was inferior to the Anglo-American one and would be given it up the arse by the surging growth of the Asians and Chinese in an era of 'globalisation' - arguably the most stupid linguistic term ever invented - but let us not get onto that JUST NOW...

So perhaps Parkinson was right and here was the true legacy of Thatcherism. A Labour Chancellor lecturing European economies, which as Evan Davis had pointed out in an intro package were in most cases more efficient than ours (notably the French), about why the key indicator they should look to was neither the productive efficiency of their labour force nor indicators of social good but labour market flexibility and the degree of 'reform' implemented in their horribly well-resourced public services.

It was Gordon Brown of course who insisted that the only option for the tube was PFI, which is why the Northern line which I travel on - or rather don't - is now run by a company from inefficient old Spain - and don't get me wrong I am not blaming them particularly for my delayed journey this morning. The legacy of long-term lack of investment is far more to blame, as is the bizarre structure for current investment set up by Gordon's PFI deal, which makes it easier and more attractive to invest in new newspaper kiosks in stations than anything to do with the actual tube line or trains.

The interesting thing was that Brown simply refused point blank to address Evan Davis inefficiency point, that was clearly NOT the reason he had turned up for the programme, oh no, he was here to tell everyone how tough he was being on the Europeans, perhaps to distract attention from declining growth in the UK and general economic jitters - no probably not, surely?

Humphreys got lost and started going on about just how much industrial product the German economy exports - yes, you got it right, the sick mensch of Europe is still the world's biggest exporter. This is understandable - he's a bit traditional like that, and Brown refused to say anything apart from 'nah nah nah Europe is inefficient and Britain is great and I'm the best economic manager ever'. [Then he thumbed his nose, waggled his ears and blew water down his trunk and all the seals in the studio clapped their flippers together - and next it was Melvyn Bragg being clever with other clever people about mammals. Anyway...]

It was all rather familiar it reminded me of Blair being interviewed about the threat from Iraq you know the sort of feeling that he just wasn't listening - like he really knew he was right - and in fact knew something we just didn't over terror threats and such like, something which he couldn't tell us, as he took on the burden of leadership and worried on our behalf about an Iraqi-linked terror 'nightmare' - you remember, around the time of all that certainty in January 2003 when Blair was questioned about his belief in the threat from Iraq in the Commons, you know, before the war?

But enough of that eh? - anyone would think we were still 'at war' with them! Still, Brown's Today interview was, also, a remarkable performance in missing the point being raised by the questioner and just talking about whatever the hell you wanted to. The worry is that, like Blair, our Atlanticist Chancellor REALLY isn't hearing what people are saying - poor Europeans eh - fancy having a summit like that where someone just lectures you without listening to your point of view ?

After the PFI experience with the tube, from which we are all still suffering in London town, that sense of someone who isn't listening should sound a warning note for Brown's first term.

And here, gentle reader, I close, having brought us full circle to that Tory hagiographer's comments about Thatcher's legacy being New Labour's use of the market mechanism to reform the NHS, as some of us wonder exactly how Mr Brown intends to fund whatever has replaced it by the time he is PM ...

The rock 'n' roll deadstars

This just in and really it kind of speaks for itself:

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Even in death, rapper Notorious B.I.G. continues to surprise. The artist, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, who died in a March 1997 shooting, "duets" with fellow deceased music legend Bob Marley on a new single, "Hold Ya Hand," which was released Monday via AOL Music. It will also appear on "The Notorious B.I.G. Duets: The Final Chapter," due November 29 via Bad Boy.

"Hold Ya Hand" includes a sample of Marley's "Johnny Was." The rest of the album is still coming together, although Bad Boy promises participation from "some of music's greatest vocalists and MCs" and "the industry's top producers."

Apparently, Tupac will provide backing vocals and Kurt Cobain will rock out on the middle eight. Now that's what I call music.

I mean seriously, has the world gone mad? Answers on a postcard to the usual Lapland address.

One in the eye for Jerry... and Jeremy

Really like the new Battle of Britain monument by the Thames which reminds me of all those Battle Action comics of yore.

It's reshreshingly triumphalist, unapologetically sentimental and, I suspect, anathema to many of the commentators of our sneery post-modern age. In a way, it celebrates not just a battle past, but a generation passing and their values. Tally-ho!

Ha-bloody-ha

Two laugh-out-loud moments in today's funnies (ok, the Guardian). The ever-reliable John Ronson and in the new Experience section of the mag I was a BNP activist... and converted to Islam, the ho-de-ho moment coming toward the end of the article when Muhammed writes: I have been close to the Hizbut-Tahrir group ever since...

So from British fascist to Islamofascist. And that's progress?

Fashion World Rocked by Cocaine Shock

The Evening Standard bill outside my local shop flags up a London Fashion Week Cocaine Shock - yes, you got it, there's a shortage, boom, boom.

Fashion and coke are undemanding bedfellows and its no suprise to anyone that people in fashion, like people in pretty much every other walk of life, from farming to narcotics control, use coke. Quelle surprise.

Admittedly the particular characteristics of coke are peculiarly well-suited to the demands of the party-rich fashion circuit. Great skin-taughtening short-term side affects, you never run out of things to say and you can keep going until it all goes black (or white if you're unlucky) - what more could you want? (Well maybe something to say, some sleep and a bit of the kind of substance that sticks in your memory rather than to the baby oil that some asshole put on all the flat surfaces in the washrooms?... no waaay?) Then again, that said, those grrrreat frosty coke-characteristics suit merchant banking pretty well too.

This inevitably leads me to Bret Easton Ellis' GLAMORAMA - as good an indication as any of the dangers of hanging out with models while taking drugs.

Now admittedly Brett was never exactly Mr Sedate but in Glamorama he really was kind of Cleaning out his Closet, well, OK, Bret's closet never really gets that clean, or indeed that out but, moving swiftly on...

Despite the fact that Glamorama is, well, MENTAL, I like it and I sort of know where Bret's coming from in his reaction to the culture and indeed sub-cultures he's paraodying, though its worth saying that if he could just relax and lay off then, you know, he wouldn't wake up feeling that way... but HELL ain't it cathartic sometimes to just... well, whatever...
In this interview Bret discusses, among other things, the apparently forthcoming movie version of Glamorama by Roger Avary - unsurprisingly things aren't going TOTALLY smoothly, over to Bret:
"He's written a real spellbinding script for Glamorama. I think the problem is that it's an expensive movie to make and I think it's topic, which is Americans committing terrorism abroad, makes it not a very popular movie in development right now. "

Well it might be that but frankly its more likely to be a whole lot of other things I can think of. But still I'm pretty much looking forward to seeing how Roger copes with Bret's late night vision of Pret a Porter vs Abu Ghraib via Fassbinder.

Meanwhile the other battle in fashion's war on reality continues as H&M drops Moss over drug claims to enable non-metro suburbanites to go 'ooh, models drugs - NEVER... cos they, you know, really CARE about their BODIES 'n all...' and half the metro-elite keep writing it up like it isn't while the rest write drug books... and Everybody Gets High On Love naturally - on love.

As noone 'sez', ...keep it real!

Lapping it up

I don't care about the bar of soap jibes, I like Alison Lapper's sculpture on the spare plinth.

Not only did I think it's full of beauty and grace, it made me proud to be part of a culture where someone like Alison is not shut away but can celebrate herself and be celebrated for it.

And I'm not being sarcy, neither.

Hey-Hey its the Thought Police... And They Ain't Monkey-ing A-round

I know, I know terrorism isn't funny any more (like religion - right Homeland Security Secretary Clunkett?)...

So I guess its probably only me that finds the spectacle of our great democratic hope Tony Blair lecturing an audience littered with dictators, demagogues and self-appointed monarchs, many of whom have never faced a democratic election, never mind a focus group of Daily Mail readers from Surrey, about the need for us all to pass laws which make it a crime to incite terrorism.

You can just imagine Robert Mugabe and King Abdullah nodding sagely, Robert turns to his advisor seated behind and to his left and smugly comments 'you see young man, we in Zimbabwe are one step ahead of these lily-livered western liberal imperialists - it has been a crime to incite terrorism against the state in Zimbabwe for many years'.

King Abdullah chuckles at this - 'yes' he says, 'and look at all this nonsense about one dead Brazilian, in Saudi Arabia we know a war on terror when we see one, you wouldn't catch my security forces announcing to the world that we shot the wrong infidel... ach ...I mean foreigner.'

But still Blair throws down gauntlet to UN and the nations pick up the gauntlet with gusto, while naturally failing to agree what terrorism is - not because there's a groundswell of discontent around the notion of accidentally outlawing a legitimate revolutionary or liberation movement (against yourself, because you're going to give a crap about that...) by accident - but because like most things its much better to leave your options open. Better to create your own national definition of thought crimes against your state than let someone else do it for you, right?

This business of The law and inciting terrorism is interesting (as Simon Gallant of Mishcon de Reya, solicitors to royalty, explains) so of course that's why we have a new set of proposals from our legislation-happy government, despite Mr Blair telling us all that its 'pretty obvious' when someone is or isn't inciting terrorism, or, as he folksily put it Bush-stylee on the Today Programme this morning, 'not playing fair' - yes gotcha this whole blowing up innocent civilians thing, that is definitely 'not playing by the rules' - right Tony! How's it go again:
"someone who comes into our country, and maybe seeks refuge here [yeah remember those evil asylum-seekers, yeah I'm talking to yoohoo Surrey focus group, pay attention - asylum-seekers, eeevil, threat to home and hearth, got it yeh? send 'em home? right...], the fact that we say if, when you are here, you want to stay here, play by the rules, play fair, don't start inciting people to go and kill other innocent people in Britain. "

- yeah, right, like those kamikaze-rucksack guys who were born in the North of our fair isle but whatever, we all know what colour they were don't we, so you know they're really foreign innit? Lets quietly forget that they're as British as the Hungerford Massacre Guy or the 'Soho Nail Bomber' ...

...yeah, yeah, I know its not that simple and there's this whole 'international dimension' because as you told the UN yesterday in one of your odder passages (and that IS saying something):

"This terrorism is a movement. It has an ideology and it has a strategy. And the strategy is not just to kill. It is by terror to cause chaos and instability and to divide and confuse us, the enemy of this terrorism.

"It won't be defeated until we unite, not just in condemning the acts of terrorism, which we all do, but in fighting the poisonous propaganda that the root cause of this terrorism somehow lies with us around this table and not with them."

"The terrorist attacks of the 7 July have their origins in an ideology born thousands of miles from our shores.

"The proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will never be halted outside of an international consensus to do so.

"The UN can be the instrument of achieving the global will of the people. It must give leadership on terrorism.

"There is not and never can be any justification, any excuse, any cause that accepts the random slaughter of the innocent. Wherever it happens, whoever is responsible we stand united in condemnation."

Now the last bit we can't argue with - though all that 'thousands of miles from our shores' stuff does sound a tad like saying 'look guys this is your problem, sort it out'

...Not of course that we are leaving it at that, as Blair defends new anti-terror plans - oh no, over here we're going to outlaw 'glorifying terrorism' - because of course if we outlaw TALKING ABOUT IT that'll stop nutters like the last lot of jihadis with a one-way train ticket to Luton even THINKING about doing anything so downright 'unfair'and 'against the rules' of the hospitality they never had to ask for as British citizens...

...is it just me or are we missing something in our rush to be seen to be employing a firm (and authoritarian) legal response?

Why is it that this is going to make me any safer?

And more appositely is this really the way we go about protecting liberty of conscience and freedom of speech?

Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say

All change again at the Guardian

As a footnote to the Guardian's move to the European Berliner format this week this week's Private has an interesting little piece on a different kind of switch. Looks like the paper could be considering a permanent switch of politics as well.

The 2005 election saw the Guardian consider backing the Liberal Demoprats, but it seems this was no one off aberration. As the paper's circulation dwindles, it hit a new low in August's Audit Bureau of Circulation figures down 4.49% to 425,737, editor Alan Rushbridger actually wants to move the paper to the centre ground permanently.


 

Well it has to do something. The Indescribablyboring is quite practised at stealing the Guardian's left of centre clothes with its endless frontpage sermonising. Of course, the Independent can do nothing else but sermonise - it has no money for reporters and real news, which is what I personally want from my newspaper. But hey, what can I say, I'm funny that way.

From Private Eye:

"For all the acres of broadsheet and Berliner size newsprint the Grauniad - or as it is now appears to be called, grauniad, devoted to its slight shrinkage, editor Alan Rushbridger did not find room to share with his readers one aspect of his future plans they might find mildly more interesting then the shift from Helvetica Bold to Egyptian.

"If I had to choose between occupying a nice on the left or being nearer the centre, whether you display that through your news reporting or your comment or both, I'm more comfortable saying this is an upmarket, serious, mainstream newspaper. There's more potential for growth there than taking comfort in political positioning," Rushbridger said.

Since this is the sort of thing that Guardian readers tend to find very discomforting, one might have expected Rushbridger to have found space in the four pages the paper devoted to the forthcoming redesign to mention it. But while readers were regaled with everything they never wanted to know about the "slightly wider 9.5pt vertical spacing for the body font on news pages" there was not a word about the paper's politics anywhere to be seen.

Happy families

Following a link from the Washington Post about America's declining popularity, I checked out the rest of the data on Transatlantic Trends and found some interesting stuff...

What the trends reveal run largely contrary to the usual media spin. They present a picture of the UK as a surprisingly liberal, green, europhile country. But enough of the editorial, here's some of the raw data...

Would you be willing for the EU to be a superpower even if it impies greater military expenditure?

YES - 51% UK. Compared to 53% France. 35% Germany.

Should the EU increase its military strength, even if this means spending more?

YES - 44% UK (No 49%). 49% France. 30% Germany.

How likely are you to be affected by the effects of global warming?

YES - 72% UK. France 82% Germany 71% (US 64%)

Favourable to the UN?

YES - 87% UK. France 94% Germany 94% (US 81%)

Now this was the thing that drew the US headlines - how they were perceived...

57% UK felt favourably about the US. 50% French. 51% Germany. (86%US)

But also interesting was how others were perceived:

FRANCE: UK 54%. Germany 68% US 53% (France 77%)
GERMANY: UK 56%. France 68%. US 60% (Germany 80%)
UK: France 57%. Germany 60%. US 72% (UK 79%)

So the French liked the British more than we liked them, and even though the Brits weren't too keen on the Yanks, the Yanks loved them almost as much as the Brits loved themselves...

Meanwhile future EU entrants the Turks felt thus:

UK 30%, France 29%, Germany 44%, US 28%... though they felt pretty good about themselves (82%). Given that the Americans are concerned that they are only liked by about half of Europeans, it is somewhat surprising that Europeans aren't less concerned by the relative hostility with which they are regarded by their would-be continental cousins...

Sold out

Having just bought a second pad in Belgium, this article made me smile...

Obviously if one has connections in Eastern Europe (nod to Baz) it can be worthwhile, but otherwise why spend 200,000 on a two bed apartment in Kiev?

Apparently the great British scramble for Eastern European property moves so fast that already countries such as Croatia and Bulgaria are old-hat.

So why not check out Romania, where the rotting hulk pictured below can be scooped up for another 200K? Romania is a little-explored country which has plenty of attractive, inexpensive properties and huge tracts of unspoilt countryside, mountains and beaches on the Black Sea. Hmmm, quite.

I settled on Belgium precisely because the universal response was "Belgium?" in an "are you mad?" kind of way. So, figuring our national blind spot might have prevented the kind of inflation I found across the border in France, I thought I would check it out and scooped up a fully refurbished, period apartment in the centre of Ostend, home of Rene Magritte and Marvin Gaye. Just a minute from the 9K sandy beach, I paid a quarter of what I'd have to cough up in Kiev, or a sixth in Brighton, only an hour further away...

Mad? Maybe, but would you buy a secondhand mansion from this man?

How to get ahead in China

Do you Yahoo? Errr, no, but should you choose to do so in the near future bear in mind that the US portal will waste no time in putting in a quick shout out to the Chinese authorities.

Information supplied by Yahoo! helped put Chinese journalist Shi Tao away for 10 years.

According to Reporters without Borders Tao Yahoo! provided China's state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him.

"We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," the press freedom organisation said.

Tao worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre. Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was "Jue Mi" (top secret).

Oh why send it out?

While this particular case is one that concerns press freedom, it raises wider issues about the lengths that Western companies, not just media companies, are willing to go to in order to satisfy the regime in Beijing to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market.

My Everchanging Moods

The article linked to in the title of this piece is a treat - no really it is...

And not just because I'm a big fan of migration, of which more later...

First of all it is a reflection of the realities of modern Britain and our own dear Universal City, as Ken notably termed it when some narrow-minded bunch of northern gimps decided to pay us a farewell visit before catching the ghost train.

Above all though its a treat for its non-sequiturs and paradoxes. At one point the hapless reporter states that "Immigrants now comprise a quarter of the capital's population and in one area, Wembley, just over half of all residents." Fine, but he then goes on to say, in a confusingly separate sentence that "In all, four in 10 people who were born abroad live in London" - crikey - I thought the tube was crowded - clearly this is not surprising given that a quarter of the globe has moved in...OK, OK this is pedantry but further entertaining statements then come apace:

Nick Pearce, director of the IPPR, said the study showed the nature of immigration was changing.
"It shows diversity has changed considerably over the past 10-15 years."

Is it just me or is that funny - first its the cobblerisation of English since it is changing 'diversity' into a noun, rather than an adjective. Secondly its the mistake of talking conehead to the public and thirdly the notion of change within something amorphously varied and generally described just amuses me. Diversity has changed - oh yes - you are so right - its err now MORE diverse and there's err, MORE OF IT... or something like that - oh and its err DIFFERENT (to how it was before, and not just because the only constant is change...) WHATEVER! [I yell, choately, I hope in the sense of the opposite of inchoate...'whaddaya mean is norra word?!']

Moving swiftly onward...

AND on the other side of the ring, IN the BLUE corner, WEARING the BLACK shirt and swastika armband we have:
"Sir Andrew Green of the pressure group Migrationwatch said they welcomed the study.
But he added: "We believe there is a growing realisation that immigration simply cannot continue at these levels."
He said the government were "riding roughshod over the views of the public". "

Hmmm.... which public eh Sir Andy? The white ones with little moustaches that want to keep their pansies purest blue or the brown ones with beards who don't want any of their co-religionists getting their quaint rural bigotries exposed to the corrupting influences of western society? I dare say the late Mr Mohammed Sidique Khan would quite like immigration restricted so that he can radicalise a notionally oppressed and isolated minority while avoiding the irritating interventions of their relatives turning up from Pakistan and saying how great it is to be able to move to such a liberal and free country...

Still Sir Andrew is right, it JUST can't go on like this, because if it does he might find 'his' public isn't 'the' public any more- and that would be terrible wouldn't it, just awful, but where on earth will we send Sir Andrew home to then - the Isle of Man? Well it is an island full of sheep and surrounded by sharks I suppose...

Migration Watch, its such a cute name isn't it, makes it sound like a spectator sport - I watch migration too - round the corner from where I work the Meze Bar is now an Eritrean Meze Bar - it was probably Eritrean before but now it says so - clearly there are now enough Eritreans who can afford to eat in a cheap restaurant for it to make good business sense to advertise this. While sir Andrew shudders I feel cheered that another part of the world has joined our city universe - not drowning but waving.